money to be your assistant.”
“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll give you double to quit.”
Somehow she doubted he’d give her twenty grand. “It’s not just about the money,” she lied. “I get satisfaction from my work. You need me and—”
“I don’t need you.”
“—and,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted, “if you don’t tell me what I can do to help you out, I’ll just have to keep coming up with stuff on my own.”
“Fine. You can write back to all those seven thousand hockey fans you’re so concerned about.”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever answered someone else’s fan mail before. “What do you want the e-mail to say?”
“One e-mail is so impersonal.” He continued around the stairs and headed down the darkened hall. “I think you need to answer each individually.”
She called after him, her Kate Spade wedges suddenly rooted to the tile. “What?”
“Write to each of the fans individually,” he repeated, his voice trailing after him.
Dread weighted her feet, and she forced herself to follow. “I thought a mass ‘thank you for your concern,’ yada yada, e-mail would be nice.”
“Yada yada isn’t personal.” He moved into a huge room with one of the biggest televisions she’d ever seen, a big leather couch, a large chaise, and three poker tables. She stopped in the doorway.
“Mention how much their letters mean to me,” he said over his shoulder. “And include something about their own letter so they’ll think I read it myself.”
“What a tool,” she whispered.
He turned and looked at her across the room. “Did you just call me a tool?”
He might have fractured half the bones in his body, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. She pointed to the poker tables and totally lied. “No. I said, ‘That’s cool.’ Do you play a lot of poker?”
“I used to.” He grabbed the television remote from an end table and turned toward the television. “You better get going on those e-mails.”
Tool, she mouthed to his back. Then she turned and made her way back to the office in the front of the house. Her wooden wedges thumped across the tile floor like a death knell. “Seven thousand e-mails,” she moaned. Ten thousand dollars.
She pulled out the chair Mark had been sitting in earlier and called her sister. “I need to know who to contact to get access to Mark’s guest book page on the Chinooks’ Web site,” she explained. “The e-mail addresses of the people who signed it are hidden.” After a few minutes of further explanations, she grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes from a drawer. She wrote down a name and a number and called the senior manager of the Web site. After some back-and-forth, he determined that she wasn’t some wacko trying to get access. He gave her the link to the administration panel, username, and a password she could use. Within minutes she was in. Easy, cheesy, lemon squeezy. Now came the hard part, replying to all those letters.
The first dozen notes expressed the writers best wishes for Mark’s recovery. They were filled with concern, recollections, and hero worship. Chelsea hit reply and wrote basically the same message in all of them:
Thank you for your concern and for taking the time to write. Your caring support means a lot to me. I am doing well and feeling better every day.
Mark Bressler
After forty-five minutes of mind-numbing work, she came across:
Hi Mark,
This is Lydia Ferrari.
Chelsea smiled. Ferrari. Right.
We met at Lava Lounge a few months before your accident. I had on the green mini T-shirt dress and you said I looked like Heidi Klum.
Chelsea rolled her eyes before she continued.
We hooked up in my apartment in Redmond. It was one of the best nights of my life. I gave you my digits but you never called. At first my feelings were hurt but now I’m just sad to hear about your accident. I hope you recover soon.
Lydia
She didn’t know which was worse. That Lydia had hooked up with a man she’d met in a bar or that she’d written about it in a public forum. As for Mark’s behavior, she wasn’t surprised. Disgusted but not surprised. He was a jock.
Sorry I hooked up with you and never called. I’m kind of a jerk that way. On behalf of all men everywhere who’ve said they were going to call and never did, I’d like to apologize. Although really, Lydia, what do you expect? Get a little self-esteem and quit hooking up with men you meet in bars.
Chelsea sat back and looked at what she’d written. Instead of hitting reply, she pressed delete and erased Lydia’s inappropriate letter and her response.
The next letter began:
Mark Turdler,
Karma’s a bitch. That hit you gave Marleau was illegal as hell. I’m glad you’re in a coma.
Dan from San Jose
She deleted that one, too. There really wasn’t an excuse for someone to write something so horrible, and she didn’t think she should dignify Dan with a response.
She answered a few more, then read:
Mark,
My son and I never miss a Chinooks’ home game and a chance to see you play. You are an inspiration to my eight-year-old son, Derek, who met you at youth hockey camp last summe Campr. You were his coach and taught him to never give up. He talks about you all the time, and because of your encouragement, he wants to play professional hockey someday.
Mary White
Chelsea lifted her eyes from the screen and looked at the posters and trophies and other memorabilia around the room. A Chinooks’ jersey with the number “12” and the name “BRESSLER” written across the shoulders hung behind Plexiglas and beneath a broken hockey stick on the wall. On another wall hung a picture of him wearing a deep blue jersey, his hair matted and sweaty. A huge smile curved his mouth and showed his straight white teeth. In one hand he held a puck with a piece of tape across it. The number “500” was written across the white cloth tape.
All these things had meaning to him and told the story of his life. A life filled with hero worship and hockey, hooking up with random women, and inspiring young boys.
His was a story she didn’t know. And truthfully, didn’t understand. He had so much. Was so lucky, and yet he was so angry. It was like he’d flipped a switch and closed off the laughing, smiling man she’d watched in interview clips. The Mark Bressler she knew was more like the man she’d seen in other video clips of him, the hockey player
